Today's Stichomancy for Dick Cheney

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac:

annihilated.

Several days were necessary to la Peyrade before he could even begin to recover from the crushing blow which had struck him down. The shock was terrible. Coming out of that golden dream which had shown him a perspective of the future in so smiling an aspect, he found himself fooled under conditions most cruel to his self-love, and to his pretensions to depth and cleverness; irrevocably parted from the Thuilliers; saddled with a hopeless debt of twenty-five thousand francs to Madame Lambert, together with another of ten thousand to Brigitte, which his dignity required him to pay with the least delay possible; and, worst of all,--to complete his humiliation and his

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence:

She wanted to forget, to forget the world, and all the dreadful, carrion-bodied people. 'Ye must be born again! I believe in the resurrection of the body! Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it shall by no means bring forth. When the crocus cometh forth I too will emerge and see the sun!' In the wind of March endless phrases swept through her consciousness.

Little gusts of sunshine blew, strangely bright, and lit up the celandines at the wood's edge, under the hazel-rods, they spangled out bright and yellow. And the wood was still, stiller, but yet gusty with crossing sun. The first windflowers were out, and all the wood seemed pale with the pallor of endless little anemones, sprinkling the shaken

Lady Chatterley's Lover

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde:

LORD GORING. Give me Robert Chiltern's letter.

MRS. CHEVELEY. Stop! Stop! Let me have time to think.

LORD GORING. Give me Robert Chiltern's letter.

MRS. CHEVELEY. I have not got it with me. I will give it to you to- morrow.

LORD GORING. You know you are lying. Give it to me at once. [MRS. CHEVELEY pulls the letter out, and hands it to him. She is horribly pale.] This is it?

MRS. CHEVELEY. [In a hoarse voice.] Yes.

LORD GORING. [Takes the letter, examines it, sighs, and burns it with the lamp.] For so well-dressed a woman, Mrs. Cheveley, you have

The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson:

gradually diminished, till we shall arrive at a region where the man shall float in the air without any tendency to fall; no care will then be necessary but to move forward, which the gentlest impulse will effect. You, sir, whose curiosity is so extensive, will easily conceive with what pleasure a philosopher, furnished with wings and hovering in the sky, would see the earth and all its inhabitants rolling beneath him, and presenting to him successively, by its diurnal motion, all the countries within the same parallel. How must it amuse the pendent spectator to see the moving scene of land and ocean, cities and deserts; to survey with equal security the marts of trade and the fields of battle;